Seminar 1: What Is History?

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Department of History

HISTORIOGRAPHY (HI323)

VENICE STREAM HANDBOOK

2012-13

Module Director: Professor David Hardiman

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Cover illustration key

The portraits are of historians or thinkers who have influenced the study of history in important ways. They are all examined on this module. They are, from top left corner, and going left to right on each line as follows:

Leopold von Ranke Karl Marx

Walter Benjamin Fernand Braudel

Michel Foucault Edward Said

Max Weber

E.P. Thompson

Ranajit Guha

Marc Bloch

Carlo Ginzburg

Judith Walkowitz

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Introducing the module

This is a core module counting for one 30-CAT unit in Finals. It is compulsory for all singlehonours History students, optional for joint degree and other advanced students. As a core module it complements teaching in specialised History modules, by providing a broad context for understanding developments in the discipline of history during the modern period. It asks students to consider what form of thinking and writing (what kind of human endeavour) ‘history’ is, and to relate the historiographical developments discussed during the course, to the works of history they study on Advanced Option and Special Subject modules.

Historiography is also intended to develop students' abilities in study, research, and oral and written communication, through a programme of seminars, lectures and essay work.

Context

Historiography has been designed to complement the learning which students will have done so far in their work in the Department, both in core and optional modules.

Historiography provides an overview of ‘doing History’ from the period of the Renaissance onwards for Venice-stream students and from the later eighteenth-century onwards for modern-stream students. It examines the ideas that have underpinned historical research and writing, and recent theories of history (many of them drawn from other disciplines), as they have been used by historians. It provides students with an opportunity to think reflexively about the nature of the historical enterprise. You are encouraged to link your studies in Historiography with your other third-year modules.

The syllabus is divided into two parts. The first part, followed in Venice, runs from week two of the autumn term through to week nine. Here you will follow the evolution of historical writing between the Renaissance and the early nineteenth-century. The second part, which runs during the spring term, focuses on twentieth-century developments in the theory and practice of history.

In the spring term Venice stream converges with Historiography as taught to the modern stream students. In some weeks this involves the two strands of the module running in parallel, with two lectures per week, as Modern Stream lecturers give lectures on Marx and

Marxisms, and the Annales school historians.

The main differences between the Venice and Modern versions of Historiography modern stream students is that the latter do not study the medieval chroniclers and humanists historians; that is, they do not study Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Sarpi, and so on. There is a week in which the eighteenth-century historical enterprise in European and colonial contexts is studied; but unlike Venice-stream students, the modern stream does not encounter the Enlightenment historians per se. Instead they have seminars on the work and historical thinking of Max Weber, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Ranajit

Guha and Judith Walkowitz. The seminar reading for these topics can be found in the

Modern Stream Handbook on-line. Venice Stream students are encouraged to follow them up. Lectures on Foucault, Said, Guha and Walkowitz will be given during term two. They will be useful for students thinking about section B of the summer examination paper.

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Teaching and Learning

Venice Stream seminars are one and a half hours long. They take place fortnightly (rather than weekly as in the modern stream case). Both streams experience comparable numbers of contact hours. Students are required to write 3 non-assessed assignments over the course of the year. Seminar tutors will set deadlines for these essays. At the discretion of the tutor, students may substitute mock exam answers for the third and final essay. There will be individual tutorials to discuss feedback on assignments.

Lectures and Seminars

Seminars follow the lectures and are connected to them. Lecturers on this module aim to provide both an introduction to the topic in hand, and a series of propositions about it. The perspectives of the lecture and the reading assigned by your tutor make up the material discussed in the seminar.

Seminar Preparation

In this Handbook each seminar is described in terms of reading Texts/Documents/

Arguments/Sources which, with the guidance of your seminar tutor, you should complete as preparation for the seminar. It is important that you always read the set text reading for the week, as familiarity with these texts forms one of the criteria in the awarding of marks in the summer examination. For each seminar there is a list of Questions to guide your reading and note-taking (some of these may also be adapted as short-essay titles; an extended list of possible titles will be also found at the end of this Handbook). Your seminar tutor may also assign additional or alternative readings from the Background Seminar

Reading lists. Additional readings are listed under different headings to provide you with

Bibliographies for essay-writing. Sometimes, these additional or further readings and the questions they raise may be the focus of your seminar group’s discussion. The summer examination paper is composed by the course team that conducts the lectures and seminars, bearing in mind the experience of each seminar group, as well as the lecture series.

Reading: General Surveys

 Bentley, Michael, Modern Historiography: An Introduction (1999). Focuses on broad trends in largely European history-writing from the Enlightenment period onwards.

 Berger, Stefan, H. Feldner and K. Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice

(2003)

 Burrow, John, A History of Histories. Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from

Herodotus … to the Twentieth Century (2007)

 Carr, E.H., What is History? (1961). A core text that you should read in full at the start of the year.

 Claus, Peter and John Marriott, History: An Introduction to Theory, Method and Practice

(2012)

 Collingwood, R.G., The Idea of History (1946). A classic.

 Ermath, Elizabeth Deeds, History in the Discursive Condition: Reconsidering the Tools of

Thought (2011). Examines the state of history-writing in the light of the postmodern challenge.

 Green, Anna and Kathleen Troup (eds), The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in

Twentieth-century History and Theory (1999). This is particularly useful for the way it introduces a theoretical and methodological vocabulary for studying twentiethcentury historiography.

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 Hughes-Warrington, Marnie, Fifty Key Thinkers on History (2008). Provides short essays on fifty mainly European and US historians, historiographers, and thinkers who have had an impact on history-writing.

 Iggers, George G. and Q. Edward Wang, A Global History of Modern Historiography

(2008). Examines history-writing as a global phenomenon, getting away from the

Eurocentricity of much of the existing literature on historiography. Focuses on the period covered in this module (in contrast to Woolf, below).

 Lambert, P. and Schofield, P, Making History (2004), (note you can access this whole book online at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-History-Introduction-

Practices/dp/041524255X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323687022&sr=8-

1#reader_041524255X )

 Rochona Majumdar, Writing Postcolonial History (2010)

 Bonnie Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice (1998).

Provides a particularly useful account of nineteenth-century developments in historical thinking and writing, and the professionalization of the discipline.

 Southgate, Beverley, History: What and Why: Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern

Perspectives (1996).

 Stunkel, Kenneth R., Fifty Key Works of History and Historiography (2011). Provides short introductions to key writings of fifty historians and thinkers who have had an impact on history-writing, from all over the world.

 Walker, Garthine (ed.), Writing Early Modern History (2005). Provides a really helpful discussion relevant to all historians, not just early modernists.

 Woolf, Daniel, A Global History of History (2011). Takes a broad sweep, with chapters on the different historical epochs of the past three millennia.

Books to Buy?

We suggest you buy books for highly practical reasons, as the university library cannot

(under copyright legislation) digitalise more than one chapter or one-fifth (whichever is the shortest) of a book. Many of the books on the ‘General Survey’ list are appropriate in this respect. Most focus on broad historiographical trends rather than the particular historians and theorists that provide the focus for this particular module. Such figures will however be covered in these books in more or less depth in passing (use the content-list and index).

You will get your money’s worth out of purchasing books such as Troup and Green’s Houses

of History, Hughes-Warrington’s Fifty Key Thinkers in History (2000), Bentley’s Modern

Historiography (1999), Claus and Marriot’s History: An Introduction to Theory, Method and

Practice (2012), and, for a more global spread, Iggers and Wang, A Global History of Modern

Historiography (2008).

Terminology

You may encounter some unfamiliar sociological and philosophical terms in your reading.

Allan Bullock & Stephen Trombley (eds), New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (London,

2000) provides a useful glossary. You could retrieve Raymond Williams’ Keywords. A

Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976; 1984) from your ‘Making of the Modern World’ archive, though probably far more useful will be Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg,

Meaghan Morris (eds), New Keywords. A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society (2005). The

Routledge Companion to Historical Studies, (ed. Alan Munslow, 2000) aims to provide the same kind of conceptual help for students of history and historiography. The on-line version of the Oxford Dictionary of Social Sciences (ed. Craig Calhoun, 2002) was found useful by students taking Historiography last year. Find it at http://www.oxfordreference.com

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Keeping Up with Developments in Historiography

Get into the habit of running the names of historians through the Oxford Dictionary of

National Biography on-line (for British and former-Commonwealth historians only). Other national dictionaries of biography can often be located by simply searching the internet with the name of the historian you are interested in. Make it a habit to regularly check the

Bibliography of British and Irish History to discover recent publications on the topics of historiography and history-writing. As with Historical Abstracts and the MLA Index

(Modern Languages Association of America) this is a good way of discovering how much recent attention the historian you are interested in has received.

An important internet source is the Institute of Historical Research’s (IHR) website ‘Making

History’. Find it at: http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/ It is dedicated to the history of the study and practice of history in Britain over the last hundred years or so, following the emergence of the professional discipline in the late nineteenth century. It contains cross-referenced entries for interviews with historians, journal articles, projects and debates. Its statistical pages allow you to analyse the profession as a historical enterprise within society. Also become familiar with ‘Making History’s’ host site, the IHR, at http://www.history.ac.uk/ Here you can watch the IHR’s attempt to move out from the

Anglocentric focus of ‘Making History’, and globalise historiography.

It is often said that historians leave thinking about history to the philosophers. The module team profoundly disagrees with this proposition! But if you want to see what philosophers of history are saying about history and historians, make it a habit to check (and browse the back issues of) History and Theory (available ONLINE and in hard copy in the Library).

Otherwise, there is the bookshop, Library, SLC, connection to journals on-line (Blackwell-

Synergie, Project-Muse, JSTOR …), digitalised course extracts …

Many of the basic texts studied in seminars are available in both the bookshop and the

Library. Many of the key book-sections and articles listed below will also be found in the

Photocopy Collection: always check there if you cannot find the journal on the shelf. The back issues of most journals are available ONLINE. Type the journal title into the Library catalogue search box, searching ‘Journals’. You will be taken to all electronic portals for the journal in question.

When a book extract has been scanned and is available online it is listed at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/electronicresources/extracts/hi/hi323

Every Historiography extract that can be legally digitalised, has been digitalised. You should check this list regularly, as new extracts may be added throughout the year.

You can read seventeenth- and eighteenth-century (English-language) histories in their original form in Early English Books On-line and Eighteenth-Century Collections On-line

(Library pages -> Resources -> Electronic Resources -> Books.) When a text is available in this easily-accessed form it is indicated in this Handbook by EEBO or ECCO. Literature

On-line (LION) will give you access to full text versions of ‘English literature’, including histories. The Making of the Modern World (MMW) is a data-base of social and economic texts from the fifteenth- to the nineteenth-century. Much history-writing has ended up here.

Access it, as above, via the Library pages.

Assessment

All students submit three non-assessed essays of about 2000 words each during Terms One and Two. The Questions in each seminar section can be reformulated as essay topics; there

7 is also a full list of Essay Titles at the end of this Handbook. You are encouraged to negotiate essay titles with your seminar tutor; the final title must have been approved by him or her. Your seminar tutor may agree to your substituting a mock exam question or questions for the third and final essay. Seminar tutors will establish deadlines for their tutees, and assignments should be handed to him or her.

Formal assessment is by a three-hour examination. You will answer three questions, at least one from Section A of the paper, dealing with the particular historians/historical thinkers/historical writing studied, and at least one question from Section B which contains general questions about the nature, practice – and history - of History.

Please note the following:

 The examination rubric changed in 2008-9. You are no longer required to answer two questions from Section A, which was the case between 2003 and

2008.

 The paper is longer than it was in the past. There are as a rule about 15 questions in Section A (starting with four for Venice Stream Students) and about 10 questions in Section B.

 Bear in mind that syllabus changes in recent years mean that some examination questions on past papers (in particular those on Robert Darnton,

Keith Thomas, and Natalie Zemon Davis) are no longer relevant to your revision.

 In the assessment of answers to Section B questions, examiners will give particular credit to those candidates who draw (where appropriate) on historiographical discussion in other modules they have studied. You are also expected to answer Section B questions in a comparative manner, and not answer them merely in relationship to one of the figures that come up in

Section A.

 Venice Stream students follow an adapted version of the module, and the initial four questions on the exam paper will relate to texts not studied by

Modern Stream students.

Aims, Objectives, and Expected Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module it is intended that students will have:

 developed their ability to assess critically historical analysis and argument, past and present

 gained an understanding of the development of the history-writing since the

Renaissance

 gained an awareness of recent and contemporary debates in the theory and practice of historical writing

 gained insight into current methodologies, theories, and concepts, currently in use within the historical discipline

 gained insight into how historical arguments have been and are made

 become aware of historiographical traditions outside the West

 had the opportunity to think reflexively about the nature of the historical enterprise within society

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Lecture and Seminar Programme

In term 2, Tuesday lectures for all History students are at 10am in the Physics Lecture

Theatre (PLT). Wednesday lectures, which are for Venice-stream students only, are in H003.

Lecturers: EC = Emmanuelle Chapin; JD = Jonathan Davies; AG = Anne Gerritsen; DH = David

Hardiman; SH = Sarah Hodges; RS = Rosa Salzburg; CS = Carolyn Steedman; LS = Laura Schwartz

Term 1

Week Lecturer Lecture

2 Mon JD 1. Why Study Historiography?

Seminar

1. What is History?

3.

Mon

4 Tues JD

5 Tues JD

6

7 Tue JD

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Tue

13

Wed**

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Tue

15

Tue

16

17

Tue

18

Tue

19

Tue

20

Tue

Term 3

23

Tue***

JD 2. Medieval Chroniclers and Humanities

Historians

3. Niccolo Machiavelli

4. Francesco Guicciardini

Research and reading week

5. Paolo Sarpi

8 Tue JD

9 Tue JD

6. Enlightenment History

7. Ranke and the idea of Empiricist

History

Term 2

Week Lecturer Lecture

11 DH 8. Edward Thompson: experience,

Tue

12

Tue

12

Wed**

RS

CS commitment and culture

9. Ginzburg: micro-history and the anthropologists

10. Karl Marx: History and Theory

CS

EC

11. Michel Foucault: power and knowledge

12. Les Annales

SH

DH

LS

DH

AG

DH

Panel

13. Edward Said: ‘Orientalism’

14. Ranajit Guha and Subaltern Studies

19. Round up session (two hours).

(This will be held from 10-12 am in MS01)

2. The Medieval Chroniclers

3. Machiavelli

4. Guicciardini

5. Sarpi & Devotional

Historiography

6. Enlightenment Historiography

7. Ranke & Rankean History

Research and reading week

15. Walkowitz: from sex to gender

(from society to culture)

16. History and the postmodern turn

17. Provincialising history: on Chinese historiography

18. The historical enterprise within society: theory and method

Seminar

8. Marx and Marxist History

9. Les Annales

10. Thompson: history from below

11. Ginzburg: the uses of case-study

12: Postmodernism: a serious

‘challenge to history’?

13. Answering Part B exam questions

14. Revision seminar

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Seminar 1: What Is History?

If ‘Historiography’ involves the study of historical writing and historical thinking as they have developed through time, then a working definition of ‘History’ will surely be useful for our own enterprise over the next two terms. The focus of this short, introductory seminar is some of the ways in which the question ‘what is History?’ has been posed, and some of the answers that have been provided by historians and other scholars. ‘History’ here is conceived of as a practice or an activity rather than as in its everyday meaning as ‘the past’. We start (most courses in Historiography do this) with the book that asked the question for the Anglophone, twentieth-century world: E. H. Carr’s What Is History?

Texts/Documents/Arguments/Sources

Carr, E. H., What Is History? (London, 1961), 7-30, 87-108

Evans, R., In Defence of History (London, 1997), 75-102

Hughes-Warrington, M., Fifty Key Thinkers on History (London, 2001), 24-31

Jenkins, K., Re-thinking History (London, 1991), 5-26

Southgate, B., History: What and Why? (London, 1996), 12-57

Thomas, Keith, ‘Diary’, London Review of Books, 32:11 (10 June 2010), 36-7. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary

Questions for Seminar:

1.

Is there such a thing as a ‘historical fact’?

2.

3.

Keith Thomas describes in very great detail how he ‘does history’. Does he raise any historiographical questions?

Gareth Stedman Jones once said that history ‘is an entirely intellectual operation that takes place in the present and in the head’. Do you agree?

4.

Why study history?

Background Seminar Reading:

Goody, J., The Theft of History (Cambridge, 2006)

History in Focus Website http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Whatishistory/

Jenkins, K., Refiguring History. New Thoughts on an Old Discipline (London, 2003), 59-70

Stedman Jones, G., ‘From Historical Sociology to Theoretical History’, British Journal of

Sociology, 27:3 (1976), 295-305

Tosh, J., The Pursuit of History: Aims Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History

(London, 2002)

Further Reading:

Appleby, J., et al., Telling the Truth about History (New York, 1994)

Bentley, M., Modern Historiography: An Introduction (London, 1999)

Burke, P. (ed.), History and Historians in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2002)

Burke, P., History and Social Theory (Cambridge, 1992)

Elton, G. R., Return to Essentials (Cambridge, 1991)

Elton, G. R., The Practice of History (London, 1969)

Fulbrook, M., Historical Theory (London, 2002)

Gallie, W. B., Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (London, 1964)

Haslam, J., The Vices of Integrity: E.H. Carr, 1892-1982 (London, 1999)

Haslam, J., ‘Carr, Edward Hallett (1892-1982)’, Oxford DNB (Oxford 2004)

Hexter, J. H., Reappraisals in History (London, 1961)

Iggers, G. G., New Directions in European Historiography (London, 1985)

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Jenkins, K., On ‘What is History?’ From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (London, 1995)

Jordanova, L., History in Practice (London, 2000)

Marwick, A., The New Nature of History: Knowledge, Evidence, Language (Basingstoke, 2001)

Skinner, Q., ‘Sir Geoffrey Elton and the Practice of History’, Transactions of the Royal

Historical Society 6 th ser. (1997), 301-316.

Smith, B., The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice (Cambridge, Mass., 1998),

Intro and chs.3-5

Tosh, J., Historians on History: An Anthology (Harlow, 2000)

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Seminar 2: The Medieval Chroniclers

Texts/Documents/Arguments/Sources:

Bruni, L., History of the Florentine People, ed. and trans. J. Hankins, (Cambridge MASS, 2001),

Book I; Book II, pp. 108-23, 206-35; Book III, pp. 292-329; Book IV, pp. 346-411.


1.

How far did humanist historians improve upon the practices of their medieval predecessors?

2.

3.

To what extent did the rhetorical elements in the works of humanist historians conflict with their authors’ commitment to truth?

Account for the prominence accorded to warfare in humanist historiography?


General:

Black, R., ed., Renaissance Thought: A Reader (London and New York, 2001)

Cochrane, E., Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1981)

William J. Connell, ‘Italian Renaissance Historical Narrative’, in José Rabasa, Masayuki Sato,

Edoardo Tortarolo, and Daniel Woolf (eds), The Oxford History of Historical Writing, Volume

3: 1400-1800 (Oxford, 2012)

Dale, S., A. Williams Lewin and D. J. Osheim, eds, Chronicling History: Chroniclers and

Historians in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (University Park, PA, 2007)

Hay, D., Annalists and Historians: Western Historiography from the Eighth to the Eighteenth

Century (London, 1977)

Gary Ianziti, Writing history in Renaissance Italy: Leonardo Bruni and the uses of the past

(Cambridge, MA, 2012)

Smalley, B., Historians in the Middle Ages (London, 1974)

Southern, R.W., ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 1. The Classical

Tradition from Einhard to Geoffrey of Monmouth’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,

Fifth Series, 20 (1970), 173-196

Southern, R.W., ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 2. Hugh of St

Victor and the Idea of Historical Development’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,

Fifth Series, 21 (1971), 159-179

Southern, R.W., ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 3. History as

Prophecy’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, 22 (1972), 159-180

Southern, R.W., ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 4. The Sense of the

Past’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, 23 (1973), 243-263

Florence:

Baron, H., The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, N.J., 1966), 47-78

Bisticci, Vespasiano da, The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of Illustrious Men of the XV Century, trans. W. G. and E. Waters (Toronto, 1997)

Black, R., ‘Benedetto Accolti and the Beginnings of Humanist Historiography’, The English

Historical Review 96 (1981), 36-58

Black, R., Benedetto Accolti and the Florentine Renaissance (Cambridge, 1985), Chapters 9-10.

Bornstein, D. E., ed. and trans., Dino Compagni’s Chronicle of Florence (University Park PA,

1986)

Brucker, G., ed. and trans., Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence: The Diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti

and Gregorio Dati (New York, 1967)

Green, L., Chronicle into History: An Essay on the Interpretation of History in Florentine

Fourteenth-century Chronicles (Cambridge, 1972)

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Hankins, J., ‘A Mirror for Statesmen: Leonardo Bruni’s History of the Florentine People’,

Unpublished paper, Harvard University http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/2958221?show=full

Holmes, G., The Florentine Enlightenment 1400-50 (London, 1969)

Ianziti, G., ‘Bruni on Writing History’, Renaissance Quarterly 51/2 (1998), 367-391

Ianziti, G., ‘Leonardo Bruni, the Medici, and the Florentine Histories’, Journal of the History of

Ideas 69/1 (2008), 1-22

Jones, P.J., ‘Florentine Families and Florentine Diaries in the Fourteenth Century’, Papers of

the British School at Rome 24 (1956), 183-205

Phillips, M., The “Memoir” of Marco Parenti: A Life in Medici Florence (Princeton NJ, 1987)

Wilcox, D. J. , The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the 15 th century

(Cambridge, Mass., 1969)

Venice:

Bembo, Pietro, History of Venice, ed. and trans. Robert W. Ulery Jr., 4 vols. (Cambridge MASS

2007-09)

Finlay, Robert, ‘Politics and History in the Diary of Marino Sanuto’, Renaissance Quarterly

33/4 (1980), 585-98

Gilbert, F., ‘Biondo, Sabellico, and the Beginnings of Venetian Official

Historiography’, in J. G. Rowe and W. H. Stockdale ( eds), Florilegium Historiale: Essays

Presented to Wallace K. Ferguson (Toronto, 1971), pp. 276-293

Sanudo, Marin, Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diary of Marin Sanudo, P. H.

Labalme and L. Sanguineti White, eds, L. L. Carroll, trans. (Baltimore, 2008)

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Seminar 3: Niccolò Machiavelli

Texts/Documents/Arguments/Sources

Machiavelli, N., Florentine Histories, trans. L.E. Banfield and H.C. Mansfield (Princeton, 1992)


1.

‘The Florentine Histories cast far more light on Machiavelli’s political ideas than on the history of fifteenth-century Florence.’ Discuss.

2.

Assess the importance of rhetoric in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories.

3.

‘Passionate political conviction rarely consorts with good history’. How far is this true of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories?


Bock, G., et al., (eds), Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge, 1990)

Butters, H. C., ‘Lorenzo and Machiavelli’, Lorenzo the Magnificent: Politics and Culture, eds. M.

E. Mallett and N. Mann (London, 1996), 275-80.

Bouwsma, W. J., ‘Three Types of Historiography in Post-Renaissance Italy’, History and

Theory 4:3 (1965), 303-14.


William J. Connell, ‘Italian Renaissance Historical Narrative’, in José Rabasa, Masayuki Sato,


3: 1400-1800 (Oxford, 2012)

Di Maria, S., ‘Machiavelli’s Ironic View of History: The Istorie Fiorentine’, Renaissance

Quarterly 45:2 (1992), 248-70

Fubini, R., ‘Machiavelli, i Medici, e la Storia di Firenze nel Quattrocento Archivio’, Storico

Italiano, 155 (1997), 127-41

Gilbert, F., ‘Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine: A Essay in Interpretation’, in F. Gilbert, History:

Choice and Commitment (Cambridge, MASS, 1977), 135-53

Gilbert, F., Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence

(Princeton, 1965)

Jurdjevic, M., ‘Machiavelli’s Sketches of Francesco Valori and the Reconstruction of

Florentine History’, Journal of the History of Ideas 63:2 (2002), 185-206

Najemy, J. M., ‘Machiavelli and the Medici: The Lessons of Florentine History’, Renaissance

Quarterly 35 (1982), 551-76

Phillips, M., ‘Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and the Tradition of Vernacular Historiography in

Florence’, American Historical Review 84 (1979), 86-105

Phillips, M., ‘Barefoot Boy Makes Good: A Study of Machiavelli’s Historiography’, Speculum

59:3 (1984), 585-605

Phillips, M., ‘The Disenchanted Witness: Participation and Alienation in Florentine

Historiography’, Journal of the History of Ideas 44:2 (1983), 191-206

Ridolfi, R., The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, trans. C. Grayson (London, 1963)

Wilcox, D. R., The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century

(Cambridge MASS, 1969)

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Seminar 4: Francesco Guicciardini


Guicciardini, F., History of Italy and the History of Florence, trans. C. Grayson, ed. J.R. Hale

(London, 1966)

Guicciardini, F., History of Italy (trans. S. Alexander, new edn, Princeton, 1984)


1.

How innovative is the Storia d’Italia as a work of history?

2.

What are the lessons of history according to Guicciardini?

3.

To what extent were Guicciardini’s historical writings affected by his political

4.

affiliations?

5.

‘Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia benefits greatly from the fact that its author had participated in many of the events that he discusses.’ Do you agree?


Burke, P., The Renaissance Sense of the Past (London, 1969)


William J. Connell, 'Italian Renaissance Historical Narrative', in José Rabasa, Masayuki Sato,


3: 1400-1800 (Oxford, 2012)

Guicciardini, F., Francesco Guicciardini 1483-1983: nel quinto centenario della nascita (Florence,

1984)

Gilbert, F., Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence

(Princeton, 1965)

Phillips, M., Francesco Guicciardini: The Historian’s Craft (Toronto, 1977)

Phillips, M., ‘Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and the Tradition of Vernacular Historiography in

Florence’, American Historical Review 84 (1979), 86-105

Ridolfi, R., The Life of Francesco Guicciardini, trans. C. Grayson (London, 1967)

Rubinstein, N., ‘The Storie fiorentine and the Memorie di famiglia by Francesco Guicciardini’,

Rinascimento 4 (1953), 173-225

Wilcox, D.R., The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century

(Cambridge, Mass., 1969)

15

Seminar 5: Paolo Sarpi and Devotional Historiography


Sarpi, P., History of Benefices and Selections from History of the Council of Trent, trans. and ed. P.

Burke (New York, 1967) [BV775.S2]

Questions for Essays and/or Seminar Preparation:

1.

‘In the sixteenth century religious controversy was the mother of historiographical advance’. Discuss.

2.

Assess the extent of Sarpi’s debt to Renaissance historiography.


Bouwsma, W., ‘Paolo Sarpi and the Renaissance Tradition’, in E. Cochrane (ed.), The Late

Italian Renaissance, 1525-1630 (New York, 1970), 653-69

Bouwsma, W., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the

Counter-Reformation (Berkeley, 1968)

Bouwsma, W.J., ‘Three Types of Historiography in Post-Renaissance Italy’, History and

Theory 4:3 (1965), 303-14.

Burke, P., ‘The Great Unmasker: Paolo Sarpi 1552-1623’, History Today 25 (1965), 426-32


William J. Connell, 'Italian Renaissance Historical Narrative', in José Rabasa, Masayuki Sato,


3: 1400-1800 (Oxford, 2012)

Ditchfield, S., Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the

Preservation of the Particular (Cambridge, 1995)

Kelley, D., ‘The Theory of History’, in Q. Skinner & E. Kessler (eds) The Cambridge History of

Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge, 1988), 746-61

Pullapilly, C. K., Caesar Baronius: Counter-Reformation Historian (Notre-Dame, 1975)

Spini, G., ‘The Art of History in the Italian Counter-Reformation’, in E. Cochrane (ed.), The

Late Italian Renaissance. 1525-1630 (New York, 1970), 91-133

Wootton, D., Paolo Sarpi: Between Renaissance and Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983)

Yates, F. A., ‘Paolo Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent’, Journal of the Warburg and

Courtauld Institutes, 7 (1944), 123-143

16

Seminar 6: Enlightenment Historiography


Ferguson, A., An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. F. Oz-Salzberger (Cambridge, 1995),

7-73, 172-193, 203-264 (also various editions, and in ECCO)

Gibbon, E, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chs. 1, 35, 36, 38 [various edns, and in ECCO]

Robertson, W., The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V ([1792] 4 vols, London, 1996),

I, ch. 1 (various edns, and in ECCO]


1.

‘The Enlightenment was simply another Renaissance’. Was this true of the historical writing of the period?

2.

How significant a role did anticlerical ideas play in the historiography of the

Enlightenment period?


Allan, D., Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment: Ideas of Scholarship in Early Modern

History (Edinburgh, 1993)

Allan, D., ‘Scottish Historical Writing of the Enlightenment’, in José Rabasa, Masayuki Sato,

Edoardo Tortarolo, and Daniel Woolf (eds), The Oxford History of Historical Writing, Vol. 3,

1400-1800 (Oxford, 2012)

Butters, H. C. ‘Machiavelli and the Enlightenment: Humanism, Political Theory and the

Origins of the "Social Sciences"‘, Florence and Beyond. Culture, Society and Politics in

Renaissance Italy, Essays in Honour of John M. Najemy, eds. D. S. Peterson and D. E. Bornstein

(Toronto, 2008), 481-495.

Burrow, J. W., Gibbon (Oxford, 1985)

Chadwick, O., ‘Gibbon and the Church Historians’, in G.W. Bowersock et al (eds), Edward

Gibbon and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 219-32

Ghosh, P. R., ‘Gibbon Observed’, Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991), 132-56.

Ghosh, P. R., ‘Gibbon’s Dark Ages: Some Remarks on the Genesis of the Decline and Fall’

Journal of Roman Studies 73 (1983), 1-23

Heath, Eugene, and Vincenzo Merolle (eds), Adam Ferguson: Philosophy, Politics and Society

(London, 2008)

Hicks, P. S., Neoclassical History and English Culture (New York, 1996)

Macintyre, A., After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory (London, 1981)

Momigliano, A., ‘Gibbon from an Italian Point of View’, in G.W. Bowersock et al (eds),

Edward Gibbon and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, MASS, 1977), 75-86

Momigliano, A., ‘Gibbon’s Contribution to Historical Method’, in Momigliano, Studies in

Historiography (London, 1966), 40-55

Phillips, M., ‘Reconsiderations on History and Antiquarianism: Arnaldo Momigliano and the Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Britain’, Journal of the History of Ideas 57:2 (1996),

297-316

O'Brien, Karen, ‘English Enlightenment Histories, 1750-c.1815’, in José Rabasa, Masayuki

Sato, Edoardo Tortarolo, and Daniel Woolf (eds), The Oxford History of Historical Writing, Vol.

3, 1400-1800 (Oxford, 2012)

Pocock, J. G. A., ‘Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic Humanist and

Philosophical Historian’, in G.W. Bowersock et al (eds), Edward Gibbon and the Decline and

Fall of the Roman Empire (Cambridge MASS, 1977)

Pocock, J. G. A., Barbarism and Religion: Vol. I: The Enlightenment of Edward Gibbon, 1737-1764;

Vol. II: Narratives of Civil Government, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1999)

Porter, R., Edward Gibbon (London, 1988)

17

Robertson, J., ‘The Scottish Enlightenment at the Limits of the Civic Tradition’, in I. Hont &

M. Ignatieff (eds), Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish

Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983), 137-78

Wootton, D., ‘Narrative, Irony and Faith in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall’ in D. Womersley (ed.),

Edward Gibbon: Bicentenary Essays (Oxford, 1997), 203-34

18

Seminar 7: Ranke and Rankean History

For this seminar, you could access the Modern Stream lecture on Ranke via the

Modern Stream Handbook on-line, as well as attending the lecture given by JD.

Read the on-line lecture in conjuncture with the accompanying PowerPoint presentation. Make notes as you would in a lecture theatre. You could spend some of the seminar discussing your reaction to this kind of remote teaching in comparison with the more traditional format. As far as content is concerned, the seminar has a dual focus, considering both Ranke’s relationship to his predecessors and some of the ways in which he was made into ‘the father of modern empirical history’ after his death. The further reading lists demonstrate several other approaches to Ranke, which your seminar group may choose to explore. These topics could also be explored in a short essay.


Von Ranke, L., The Secret of World History (ed. R. Wines, New York, 1981), 53-59, 73-97, 240-

241

Von Ranke, L., Theory and Practice of History (ed. G. G. Iggers & K. von Moltke, New York,

1973), 25-57

Reading these digitalised extracts gives you access to Ranke’s variety of writing on: the distinction between history and philosophy, on history and politics, on ‘The Great Powers, his idea of the ‘holy hieroglyph’ and his critique of Guicciardini. The Theory and Practice of

History volume also includes the Prefaces to the major works. These could not be digitalised for copyright reasons. The volume is on reserve in SLC. You can also read the Preface to the six volumes of Ranke’s History of England, Principally in the Seventeenth Century here: http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/ranke/


1.

Why did Ranke reject ‘philosophical’ history?

2.

How important is a historian’s background to understanding his/her work?

3.

Assess the view that ‘for Ranke the writing of history was an act of worship’.

4.

How significant was historicism to Ranke’s historical practice?


Bann, S., Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York, 1995), 3-29

Braw, J. D., ‘Vision as Revision: Ranke and the Beginning of Modern History’, History and

Theory, 46:4 (2007), 45–60

Burke, P., ‘Ranke the Reactionary’, in G. G. Iggers & J. M. Powell (eds), Leopold von Ranke and

the Shaping of the Historical Discipline (Syracuse, 1990), 36-44

Green, A., & Troup, K. (eds), The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-century

History and Theory (Manchester, 1999), 1-11 (‘The Empiricists’)

Hughes-Warrington, M., Fifty Key Thinkers in History (London, 2000), 256-263

Iggers, G. and Wang, Q. E., A Global History of Modern Historiography (Harlow, 2008), 69-82

Iggers, G., 'The Intellectual Foundations of Nineteenth-Century 'Scientific' History: The

German Model', in Stuart Macintyre, Juan Maiguashca, and Attila Pók (eds), The Oxford

History of Historical Writing, Volume 4: 1800-1945 (Oxford, 2011)

Krueger, C., ‘Mary Anne Everett Green and the “Calendars Of State Papers” as a Genre of

History Writing’, Clio 36:1 (2006), 1-21

Smith, B., The Gender of History. Men, Women and Historical Practice (Cambridge MASS, 1998),

Ch 4

19

Stuchtey, Benedikt, 'German Historical Writing', in Stuart Macintyre, Juan Maiguashca, and

Attila Pók (eds), The Oxford History of Historical Writing, Vol. 4, 1800-1945 (Oxford, 2011)

Warren, J., ‘The Rankean Tradition in British Historiography, 1840-1950’, in S. Berger, H.

Feldner and K. Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (London, 2003), 23-41

Further Reading on Ranke, his Work, and his Legacies


Kelley, D. R. (ed.), Versions of History from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (New Haven, 1991)

Krieger, L., ‘Elements of Early Historicism: Experience, Theory and History in Ranke’,

History & Theory: Beiheift 14: Essays on Historicism (1976), 1-14

Krieger. L., Ranke: The Meaning of History (Chicago, 1977)

Lambert, P., ‘The Professionalization and Institutionalization of History’, in S. Berger, H.

Feldner and K. Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (London, 2003), 42-60

Von Laue, T. H., Ranke: The Formative Years (Princeton, 1950) [contains Ranke’s ‘Dialogue on

Politics’ and ‘The Great Powers’]

On Ranke’s Relationship to his Predecessors

Gardiner, P. (ed.), Theories of History: Readings from Classical and Contemporary Sources (New

York, 1959), pp 34-48, 58-73 (extracts from Hegel & Herder)

Iggers, G. G., ‘The Theoretical Foundations of German Historicism II: Leopold von Ranke’, in Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from

Herder to the Present (Middleton, Conn., 1968)

Kelley, D. R., Faces of History: Historical Enquiry from Herodotus to Herder (New Haven, 1998), chs.9-10

Reill, P., The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (Berkeley, 1975)

Stern, F., The Varieties of History from Voltaire to the Present (New York, 1973), ch.3 (Ranke extracts at 55-62: ‘The Ideal of Universal History: Ranke’)

On Ranke’s Relationship to Sir Walter Scott’s History-writing

Brown, D. D., Walter Scott and the Historical Imagination (London, 1979)

Curthoys, A. & Docker, J., Is History Fiction? (Sydney, 2005), ch. 3

Pittock, M., The Reception of Walter Scott in Europe (London, 2006)

Robertson, F., Legitimate Histories: Scott, Gothic, and the Authorities of Fiction (Oxford, 1994)

Scott, W., ‘Advertisement’ [Preface] to The Antiquary (in the Waverley Novels) (Edinburgh

1815) LION

Scott, W., Quentin Durward (Edinburgh, 1823) (Full-text available at LION)

Chapter or article length studies of different aspects of Ranke’s work

Ankersmit, F. R., ‘Historicism: An Attempt at Synthesis’, History and Theory 34:3 (October

1995), 143-61.

Bahners, P., ‘“A Place Among the English Classics”: Ranke’s History of the Popes and its

British Readers’, in B. Stuchtey & P. Wende (eds), British and German Historiography, 1750-

1850: Traditions, Perceptions and Transfers (Oxford, 2000), 123-58

Fitzsimmons, M. A., ‘Ranke: History as Worship’, Review of Politics 42 (1980), 533-55

Gay, P., Style in History (London, 1975)

Geyl, P., ‘Ranke in the Light of the Catastrophe’, in Geyl, Debates with Historians (Groningen,

1955), 9-29

Gilbert, F., ‘Ranke as the Teacher of Jacob Burckhardt’, in G. G. Iggers & J. M. Powell (eds),

Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical Discipline (Syracuse, 1990), 82-88

20

Gilbert, F., History: Politics or Culture? Reflections on Ranke and Burckhardt (Princeton, 1991), ch.2 (‘Ranke’s View of the task of Historical Scholarship’) & 3 (‘Ranke and the Meaning of

History’)

Grafton, A., ‘The Footnote from de Thou to Ranke’, History & Theory 33 (1994), 53-76

Grafton, A., The Footnote: A Curious History (London, 1997)

Herkless, J. L., ‘Meinecke and the Ranke-Burckhardt Problem’, History and Theory, 9:3 (1970),

290-321

Iggers, G. G., ‘The Image of Ranke in American and German Historical Thought’, History &

Theory 2 (1962), 17-40

Liebeschutz, H., Ranke (Historical Association, London, 1954)

McClelland, C., ‘England as First Cousin: Ranke and Protestant-Germanic Conservatism’, in

C. McClelland, The German Historians and England: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Views

(Cambridge, 1971), 91-107

Meinecke, F., ‘Ranke and Burckhardt’, in H. Kohn (ed.), German History: Some New German

Views (London, 1954), 141-56

Ramm, A., ‘Leopold von Ranke’, in J. Cannon (ed.), The Historian at Work (London, 1980), 36-

54

Schulin, E., ‘Universal History and National History, Mainly in the Lectures of Leopold von

Ranke’, in G. G. Iggers & J. M. Powell (eds), Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical

Discipline (Syracuse, 1990), 70-81

Smith, B. G., ‘Gender and the Practices of Scientific History’, American Historical Review 100:4

(1995), 1150-1176

Vierhaus, R., ‘Historiography Between Science and Art’, in G. G. Iggers & J. M. Powell (eds),

Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical Discipline (Syracuse, 1990), 61-69

White, H., ‘Ranke: Historical Realism as Comedy’, in White, Metahistory: The Historical

Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, 1973), ch.4

21

Seminar 8: Marx and Theories of History

We will continue to explore the idea of the historian writing about his/her own times in the guise of the past. This is a particularly interesting question in relation to The

Eighteenth Brumaire: Marx wrote in the middle of what would only later be labelled ‘a historical event’ (Louis Bonaparte’s 1852 coup).


Marx, K., & Engels, F., The Communist Manifesto (1848), Section I (‘Bourgeois and

Proletarians’), in Karl Marx: Selected Writings (ed. D. McLellan, Oxford, 1977), 222-31

Marx, K., ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ (1852), in Karl Marx: Selected

Writings (ed. D. McLellan, Oxford, 1977), 300-25

Marx, K., ‘Preface’ to A Critique of Political Economy in Karl Marx: Selected Writings (ed. D.

McLellan, Oxford, 1977), 388-92

All works by Marx can be found (in addition to the scanned extracts above) in the Moscow

Foreign Languages editions of Marx's collected or selected works. Alternatively you can use the extracts provided in the SLC Photocopy Collection. There are multiple copies of two abbreviated versions of ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire’ here: one from McLellan, the other

(rather longer) from the Moscow Selected works. The SLC photocopies of Section 1 of The

Communist Manifesto are labelled ‘Bourgeois & Proletarians’. All these items are available at many websites.


Hughes-Warrington, M., Fifty Key Thinkers on History (London, 2000), 215-224

Iggers, G. and Wang, Q. E., A Global History of Modern Historiography (Harlow, 2008), pp. 317-

337

Tosh, J., The Pursuit of History (Harlow, 2009), 226-234.


1.

In what particular ways was Marx’s historical method distinctive? How did he differ from (a) Ranke and (b) positivist history?

2.

How did Marx understand the relationship between philosophy and social action? How did this differ from Hegel?

3.

How successful is The Eighteenth Brumaire in explaining away the failure of the vision expressed in The Communist Manifesto?

4.

Why was Marx so influential in the hundred or so years after his death in 1883, and are Marx’s writings of any relevance to us today?

Further reading on Eighteenth Brumaire:

‘Revisiting Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire after 150 Years’ (in a Special Issue of Strategies. A

Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics (2003)

Macdonald, B. J., ‘Revisiting Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire After 150 Years: Introduction’,

Strategies 16:1 (2003), 3-4

Carver, T., ‘Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte - Eliding 150 Years’, Strategies 16:1

(2003), 5-11

Myers, J. C., ‘From Stage-ist Theories to a Theory of the Stage: The Concept of Ideology in

Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire’, Strategies, 16:1 (2003), 13-21

Snyder, R. C., ‘The Citizen-Soldier and the Tragedy of The Eighteenth Brumaire’, Strategies

16:1 (2003), 23-37

22

Wendling, A. E., ‘Are All Revolution Bourgeois? Revolutionary Temporality in Karl Marx’s

Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, Strategies 16:1 (2003), 39-49.

Roberts, W. C., ‘Marx Contra the Democrats: The Force of The Eighteenth Brumaire’, Strategies

16:1 (2003), 51-64

Macdonald, B. J., ‘Inaugurating Heterodoxy: Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire and the “Limit-

Experience” of Class Struggle’, Strategies 16:1 (2003), 65-75

Marx: Origins and Influences:

Aron, R., Main Currents in Sociological Thought, Vol. I, Montesquieu, Comte, Marx, Tocqueville,

the Sociologists and the Revolutions of 1848 (London, 1968)

Cohen, G., Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford, 1978)

Fernbach, D. (ed.), [Marx’s] Political Writings (The Revolution of 1848; Surveys from Exile), 2 vols (London, 1973) (both contain valuable introductions)

Giosue, G., ‘Tragedy and Repetition in Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louise Bonaparte’,

Clio, 26:4 (1997), 411-25

Groopman, L.C., ‘A Re-reading of Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’,

Journal of European Studies, 12:2 (1982), 113-29

Hall, S., ‘The “Political” and the “Economic” in Marx's Theory of Classes’, in A. Hunt (ed.),

Class and Class Structure (London, 1977), 15-60

Hayes, P., ‘Utopia and the Lumpenproletriat: Marx’s Reasoning in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louise Bonaparte’, Review of Politics, 50:3 (1988), 445-65

Hobsbawm, E., ‘Class Consciousness in History’, in I. Meszaros (ed.), Aspects of History and

Class Consciousness (London, 1971), 5-21

Hobsbawm, E., ‘Introduction’, to K. Marx & F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto: A Modern

Edition (London, 1998), 3-29

Hobsbawm, E., ‘Marx and History’, in E. Hobsbawm, On History (London, 1997), 157-70

Krieger, L., ‘Marx and Engels as Historians’, in B. Jessop & C. Malcolm-Brown (eds), Karl

Marx's Social and Political Thought: Critical Assessments, Vol. II: Social Class and Class Conflict

(London, 1990), 49-72

Moss, B. H., ‘Marx and Engels on French Social Democracy: Historians or Revolutionaries?’,

Journal of the History of Ideas 46:4 (1985), 539-58

Riquelme, J-P., ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Karl Marx as Symbolic Action’, History and Theory

19:1 (1980), 58-72

Shaw, W. H., ‘“The Handmill Gives You the Feudal Lord”: Marx’s Technological

Determinism’, History and Theory 18 (1979), 155-76

Spencer, M., 'Marx on the State: Events in France 1848-50', Theory & Society (1979), 167-98

Whittam, J., ‘Karl Marx’, in J. Cannon (ed.), The Historian at Work (London, 1980), 86-103

23

Seminar 9: Les Annales: From Bloch to Braudel and Beyond

The seminar will consider the development of this influential ‘school’ of historical thought, in France and in the wider world. We can explore in some detail the interaction of historical, anthropological, and sociological paradigms in determining a new way of analysing the past. The way in which these ‘other’ disciplines in the human and social sciences have shaped modern history will be a preoccupation of the Historiography module from now on. So too will be the Annalist historians’ conception of time. Are the ideas of histoire totale, la longue durée, and histoire

événementielle at work in other historians’ work you have studied?


Bloch, M., The Historian's Craft (ed. P. Burke, Manchester, 1992), 17-39

Braudel, F., ‘History and the Social Sciences. The Long Term’, Social Science Information, 9:1

(1970), 144-174 OR

Braudel, F., ‘History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée’, in On History (Chicago,

1980), 25-54

Evans, R. J., ‘Cite Ourselves!’, London Review of Books, 31:23 (Dec 2009), 12-14 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n23/richard-j-evans/cite-ourselves

Febvre, L., ‘A New Kind of History’, in A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Lucien

Febvre (ed. P. Burke, London, 1973), 27-43


Bentley, M., Modern Historiography: An Introduction (London, 1999), 103-115

Goody, J., The Theft of History (Cambridge, 2006), 180-214 (‘The Theft of Capitalism. Braudel and Global Comparison’)


History and Theory (Manchester, 1999), 87-97 (‘The Annales’)

Harris, O., ‘Braudel: Historical Time and the Horror of Discontinuity’, History Workshop

Journal, 57 (2004), 161-174

Hughes-Warrington, M., Fifty Key Thinkers on History (London, 2000), ‘Marc Bloch’, ‘Fernand

Braudel’

Iggers, G. G. & Wang, E. Q., A Global History of Modern Historiography (London, 2008), 186-

188; 256-262; 331-234

Middell, M., ‘The Annales’, in S. Berger, H. Feldner and K. Passmore (eds), Writing History:

Theory and Practice (London, 2003), 104-17


1.

What were Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre against, and what were they for?

2.

Is total or holistic history possible or desirable?

3.

How do you understand Braudel’s division of time into that of (1) structure – long time (longue durée), (2) conjuncture – medium-term units of decades, and (3) event – short term (histoire événementielle)? What are the advantages and disadvantages of a focus on the longue durée?

4.

Why did E. Le Roy Ladurie turn from structuralist history to the history of mentalities, and how useful – if at all – is the study of mentalities for understanding social movements and periods of revolutionary change?

1. General reading on Les Annalistes:

Burguière, A., The Annales School: An Intellectual History (Ithaca NY, 2009).

24

Burke, P., ‘French Historians and their Cultural Identities’, in E. Tonkin et al (eds), History

and Ethnicity (London, 1989), 157-167

Burke, P., The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929-89 (Cambridge, 1990)

Carrard, P., Poetics of the New History: French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier

(Baltimore, 1992)

Clark, S. (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999)

Cobb, R., ‘Annalistes’ Revolution’, Times Literary Supplement (8 September 1966), 19-20, reprinted as ‘Nous des Annales’, in Cobb, A Second Identity: Essays on France and French History

(Oxford, 1969), 76-83

Dosse, F., New History in France: The Triumph of the Annales (Urbana IL, 1994)

Fox-Genovese, E., ‘The Political Crisis of Social History: A Marxian Perspective’, Journal of

Social History, 10 (1976), 205-20

Himmelfarb, G., The New History and the Old (Cambridge MASS, 1987), 1-46

Hunt, L., ‘French History in the Last Twenty Years: The Rise and Fall of the Annales

Paradigm’, Journal of Contemporary History, 21 (1986), 209-24, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.),

The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999), I, 24-38


Iggers, G. G., Historiography in the Twentieth Century: from Scientific Objectivity to the

Postmodern Challenge (Middletown, CT, 1997), ch.5

Jones, G. S., ‘The New Social History in France’, in C. Jones & D. Wahrman (eds), The Age of

Cultural Revolutions: Britain and France, 1750-1820 (Berkeley, 2002), 94-105

Judt, T., ‘A Clown in Regal Purple: Social History and the Historians’, History Workshop

Journal 7 (1979), 66-94

Macintyre, A. , After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory (London, 1981)

Skinner, Q., The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (Cambridge, 1990), ch.1

Stoianovich, T., French Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm (Ithaca, 1976)

Stone, L., The Past and the Present (London, 1981), 3-44, 74-96

2. Reading for Marc Bloch & Lucien Febvre:

Chirot, D., ‘The Social and Historical Landscape of Marc Bloch’, in T. Skocpol (ed.), Vision

and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1984), 22-46, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The

Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999), IV, 177-99

Epstein, S. R., ‘Marc Bloch: The Identity of a Historian’, Journal of Medieval History, 19 (1993),

273-83

Fink, C., Marc Bloch: A Life in History (Cambridge, 1989)

Ginzburg, C., ‘German Mythology and Nazism: Thoughts on an Old Book by Georges

Dumezil’, in Ginzburg, Myths, Emblems, Clues (London, 1990), 126-45

Loyn, H., ‘Marc Bloch’, in J. Cannon, J. (ed.), The Historian at Work (London, 1980), 121-35, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999), IV,

162-76

Lyon, B., ‘Marc Bloch, Historian’, French Historical Studies, 15 (1987), 195-207

Lyon, B., ‘Marc Bloch: Did He Repudiate Annales History?’, Journal of Medieval History, 11

(1985), 181-92, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols,

London, 1999), IV, 200-212

3. Reading for Fernand Braudel:

Braudel, F., The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II, 2 vols.

(London, 1972-73)

Braudel, F., Civilisation and Capitalism, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries: The Structures of

Everyday Life; The Wheels of Commerce; The Perspective of the World (3 vols., London, 1981-5)

25

Braudel, F., The Identity of France: History and Environment; People and Production (2 vols.,

1988-90)

Burke, P., ‘Fernand Braudel’, in J. Cannon, J. (ed.), The Historian at Work (London, 1980), 188-

202, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London,

1999), III, 111-23

Kinser, S., ‘Capitalism Enshrined: Braudel’s Trypych of Modern European History’, Journal

of Modern History, 53 (1981), 673-82, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical

Assessments, 4 vols (London, 1999), III, 184-94

Kinser, S., ‘Annaliste Paradigm? The Geo-Historical Structuralism of Fernand Braudel’,

American Historical Review, 86 (1981), 63-105, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School:

Critical Assessments, 4 vols (London, 1999), III, 124-75

McNeill, W., et al., ‘History With A French Accent’, Journal of Modern History, 44 (1972), 447-

538 (incl. F. Braudel, ‘Personal Testimony’, 448-67; H. R. Trevor Roper, ‘Fernand Braudel, the

Annales, and the Mediterranean’, 468-79 ; J. H. Hexter, ‘Fernand Braudel and the Monde

Braudellien . . .’, 480-538)

4. Readings for other Annales historians:

Ariès, P., et al. (eds), A History of Private Life (5 vols., Cambridge MASS, 1987-94)

Goubert, P., The Ancien Regime: French Society, 1600-1750 (London, 1974)

Le Roy Ladurie, E., Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village, 1294-1324 (London,

1978)

Le Roy Ladurie, E., The Mind and Method of the Historian (Chicago, 1981)

Le Roy Ladurie, E., The Peasants of Languedoc (Urbana IL, 1974)

Le Roy Ladurie, E., The Territory of the Historian (Hassocks, 1979)

Vovelle, M., Ideologies and Mentalities (Cambridge, 1990)

26

Seminar 10: Thompson: History from Below

The historian E. P. Thompson’s work and influence can be considered under many headings: ‘E. P. Thompson and the New Social History … and the cultural turn in historical studies … and anthropology … and Marxism … and labour and people’s history … ‘ (and many more). We have chosen to begin discussion of his work and its legacy with the idea of ‘history from below’ because this will allow us to revise the idea of ‘history from above’ (as practised for example, by von Ranke) and to anticipate the emergence of Subaltern Studies in the later twentieth century. With the argument that Thompson was above all ‘a historian of the Cold War era’, we can also revisit the proposition that all historical writing is as much about the cultural and political circumstances it emerges from, as it is about its ostensible subject matter.


Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963), 9-27, 207-232, 887-

915

Thompson, E. P., ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past

& Present 50 (1971), 76-136 & reprinted in Thompson, Customs in Common (London, 1991), ch.4, along with a rejoinder to his critics.



History and Theory (Manchester, 1999), 33-43 & 44-58 (‘Marxist Historians’)

Hughes-Warrington, M., Fifty Key Thinkers on History (London, 2001), ‘E. P. Thompson’

Iggers, G. G. & Wang, E. Q., A Global History of Modern Historiography (London, 2008), 250-

279

Munslow, A. The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies (London, 200), 43-45, 64-67

Rosaldo, R. ‘Celebrating Thompson’s Heroes: Social Analysis in History and Anthropology’, in H. J. Kaye & K. McClelland (eds), E. P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1990),

103-124

Rule, J., ‘Thompson, Edward Palmer (1924-1993)’, Oxford DNB (Oxford, 2004)

Soper, K., ‘Socialist Humanism’, in Kaye & McClelland, op.cit., pp. 204-232.

Welskopp, T., ‘Social History’, in S. Berger, H. Feldner and K. Passmore (eds), Writing

History: Theory and Practice (London, 2003), 203-22


1.

What, in your opinion, were E.P Thompson’s key ideas? How original was he?

2.

3.

4.

What, in your opinion, were the main failures and omissions from his history?

Did Thompson’s political work make him a better historian?

Drawing on what you have studied in your other History modules, discuss whether or not there is still ‘a Thompsonian legacy’? Do you find his ideas useful in your understanding of history?

1. Some Key Works by E. P. Thompson:

E.P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (London, 1976)

E.P. Thompson, ‘Anthropology and the Discipline of Historical Context’, Midland History,

1:3, Spring 1972.

Thompson, E. P., ‘Folklore, Anthropology and Social History’, Indian Historical Review, 3:2

(1978), 247-266, & reprinted as a Studies in Labour History Pamphlet (1979), copy available in library.

27

E.P. Thompson, ‘Eighteenth-century English Society: Class Struggle without Class?’, Social

History, 3: 2, May 1978.

Thompson, E. P., Warwick University Ltd. Industry, Management and the Universities

(Harmondsworth, 1970)

Thompson, E. P., The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (London, 1978).

Thompson, E. P., Writing by Candlelight (London, 1980)

Thompson, E.P., Customs in Common (London 1991). A collection put together by Thompson of some of his best-known essays, along with replies to his critics.

Thompson, E. P., Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (London, 1993).

2. Readings on E.P. Thompson:

Anderson, P., Arguments within English Marxism (London, 1980)

Bess, H., ‘E. P. Thompson: The Historian as Activist’, American Historical Review, 98 (1993),

19-38

Curry, P., ‘Towards a Post-Marxist Social History: Thompson, Clark and Beyond’, in A.

Wilson (ed.), Rethinking Social History: English Society, 1570-1920 and Its Interpretation

(Manchester, 1993), 158-200

Donnelly, F. K., ‘Ideology and Early English Working-Class History: Edward Thompson and his Critics’, Social History 2 (1976), 219-38

Eastwood, D., ‘History, Politics and Reputation: E.P. Thompson Reconsidered’, History 85

[No.280] (2000), 634-54

Hamilton, S., The Crisis of Theory: EP Thompson, the New Left and Postwar British Politics

(Manchester 2011)

Hitchcock, T., ‘A New History From Below’, History Workshop Journal, 57 (2004), 294-98


Postmodern Challenge (Middletown CT, 1997), ch.7

Jay, M., Songs of Experience. Modern American And European Variations On A Universal Theme,

(Berkeley CA and London, 2005)

Ireland, C., ‘The Appeal to Experience and its Consequences: Variations on a Persistent

Thompsonian Theme’, Cultural Critique 52 (2002), 86-107

Johnson, R., ‘Edward Thompson, Eugene Genovese and Socialist-Humanist History’, History

Workshop Journal, 6 (1978), 79-100

Kaye, H., & McClelland, K. (eds), E.P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1991)

King, P., ‘Edward Thompson’s Contribution to Eighteenth-Century Studies: The Patrician-

Plebeian Model Re-Examined’, Social History, 21 (1996), 215-28

Randall, A., & Charlesworth, A. (eds), Moral Economy and Popular Protest: Crowds, Conflict and

Authority (Basingstoke, 2000)

Scott, J. W., ‘The Evidence of Experience’, Critical Inquiry, 17 (1991), 773-97, & revised as

‘Experience’, in J. Butler & J.W. Scott (eds), Feminists Theorize the Political (New York, 1992),

22-40

Steinberg, M. W., ‘A Way of Struggle: Reformations and Affirmations of E.P. Thompson’s

Class Analysis in the Light of Post-modern Theories of Language’, British Journal of Sociology,

48 (1997), 471-92

Steinberg, M. W., ‘Culturally Speaking: Finding a Commons Between Post-Structuralism and the Thompsonian Perspective’, Social History, 21 (1996), 193-214

Wrightson, K., English Society, 1580-1680 (London, 2003), 9-16 (Introduction)

Yeo, E., ‘E. P. Thompson: Witness Against the Beast’, in W. Lamont (ed.), Historical

Controversies and Historians (London, 1998), 215-224

28

3. Some Post-Thompsonian Approaches to the History of Class:

Calhoun, C., The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism During the

Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1982)

Chakrabarty, D., Rethinking Working-class History. Bengal, 1890-1940 (Princeton NJ, 2000)

Davidoff, L., & Hall, C., Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-

1850 (London, 1987)

Feldman, D., ‘Class’, in P. Burke (ed.), History and Historians in the Twentieth Century (Oxford,

2002), 181-206

Jones, G. S., Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832-1982

(Cambridge, 1984)

Joyce, P., Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1840-1914

(Cambridge, 1991)

Rollison, D., ‘Discourse and Class Struggle: The Politics of Industry in Early Modern

England’, Social History, 26 (2001), 166-89

Wahrman, D., Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1750-

1840 (Cambridge, 1995)

Walter, J., Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers

(Cambridge, 1999), ch.7 (esp. 260-84)

Wood, A., The Politics of Social Conflict: The Peak Country, 1520-1770 (Cambridge, 1999), 10-26,

316-25

4. British Marxism and Communist Historians

Dworkin, D., Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left and the Origin of

Cultural Studies (Durham NC, 1997)

Hobsbawm, E. J., ‘Where are British Historians Going?’, Marxist Quarterly, 2 (1955), 14-26

Kaye, H. J., The British Marxist Historians: An Introductory Analysis (Cambridge, 1984)

Kaye, H. J., The Education of Desire. Marxists and the Writing of History (London, 1992)

Kaye, H. J., ‘Fanning the Spark of Hope in the Past: the British Marxist Historians’,

Rethinking History, 4:3 (2000), 281-94

Lee, R. E., The Life and Times of Cultural Studies (Durham SC, 2003), 11-34

Long, P., Only in the Common People: The Aesthetics of Class in Post-War Britain (Newcastle,

2008)

Palmer, B. D., ‘Reasoning Rebellion. E.P. Thompson, British Marxist Historians, and the

Making of Dissident Political Mobilization’, Labour / Le Travail, 50 (2002), 187-216

Renton, D., ‘Studying Their Own Nation Without Insularity? The British Marxist Historians

Reconsidered’, Science and Society, 69:4 (2005), 559-79

5. Women and the Making of Class

Chenut, H. H., The Fabric of Gender: Working-Class Culture in Third Republic France

(Philadelphia PA, 2005)

Clarke, A., The Struggle for the Breeches. Gender and the Making of the British Working Class

(London, 1995)

Hall, C., ‘The Tale of Samuel and Jemima. Gender and Working-class Culture in Nineteenthcentury England’, in H. J. Kaye & K. McClelland (eds), E. P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives

(Cambridge, 1990), 78-102; also available in Hall, C., White, Male and Middle Class

(Cambridge, 1992)

Kessler-Harris, A., Gendering Labor History (Urbana IL & Chicago, 2007)

Lee, C. K., Against the Law. Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (Berkeley CA, 2007).

Scott, J. W., ‘Women in The Making of the English Working Class’, in Scott, Gender and the

Politics of History (New York, 1988), 68-90

29

Steedman, C., Master and Servant. Love and Labour in the English Industrial Age (Cambridge

2007)

Steedman C., Labours Lost. Domestic Service and the Making of Modern England (Cambridge,

2009)

6. The Historian’s Times

Bloom, A., & Breines, W. (eds), ‘Takin' it to the streets’. A Sixties Reader (Oxford, 2003)

Fraser, R. (ed.), 1968. A Student Generation in Revolt. An International Oral History (London,

1988)

Horn, G-R., The Spirit of '68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956-1976

(Oxford, 2007)

Lashmar, P., & Oliver, J., Britain's Secret Propaganda War 1948-1977 (Stroud, 1998)

Long, P., Only in the Common People. The Aesthetics of Class in Post-War Britain (Newcastleupon-Tyne, 2008)

Mayhew, C., A War of Words: A Cold War Witness (London, 1998)

Rowbotham, S., Segal, L., & Wainwright, H., Beyond the Fragments. Feminism and the Making

of Socialism (London, 1979)

Saunders, F. S., Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London, 1999)

Scott-Smith, G. & Krabbendam, H. (eds), The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe (London,

2005)

Thompson, E. P., ‘The Business University’, in Writing by Candlelight (London, 1980), repr. of

‘The Business University’, New Society, 19 Feb 1970

Thompson, E. P., Beyond the Cold War (London, 1982)

30

Seminar 11: Ginzburg: the Uses of Case-study

What is micro-history? What kind of methods and perspectives does it involve? Is a micro-history like The Cheese and the Worms a case-study, or ‘just a story’? How do historians using its methods relate their ‘case’ to wider contexts? Do they even try to do that? Is the micro-historian’s approach comparable to that of the anthropologist, working on and representing ‘other’ cultures’?


Ginzburg, C., The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller ([1976]

London, 1980), xi-xxvi, 1-41, 112-128

Ginzburg, C., ‘Killing a Chinese Mandarin: On the Moral Implications of Distance’, Critical

Inquiry, 21 (1994), 46-60


Brewer, J., ‘Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life’, Cultural and Social History, 7:1

(2010), 87-109

Gentilcore, D., ‘Anthropological Approaches’, in G. Walker (ed.), Writing Early Modern

History (London, 2005), 49-70


History and Theory (Manchester, 1999), 172-81 (‘Anthropology and Ethnohistory’)

Iggers, G. & Wang, Q. E., A Global History of Modern Historiography (London, 2008), 275-277

Levi, G., ‘On Microhistory’, in P. Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing

(Cambridge, 1991), 93-113

Munslow, A., The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies (London, 2000), 64-67


1.

Why did microhistory come to the fore in the 1970s and 1980s? Was this good for the discipline of history?

2.

How do you situate microhistory? Is it essentially local history? Is it really an anthropology of the past? Or, is it more like a work of literature? What is the role of the strong narrative structure of The Cheese and the Worms?

3.

Is this essentially a history of mentalities? Is Menocchio really representative of the popular mind of his day?

4.

How does microhistory relate to macrohistory? Is it wrong to seek to generalise on the basis of one microhistorical study? Should we even try? Or, should we just celebrate the ‘fragment’?

1. Other Works by Carlo Ginzburg:

Ginzburg, C., ‘The High and the Low: The Theme of Forbidden Knowledge in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Past & Present, 73 (1976), 28-41, reprinted in Ginzburg, Myths,

Emblems, Clues (London, 1990), 60-76

Ginzburg, C., ‘Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method’, History

Workshop Journal, 9 (1980), 5-36, reprinted as ‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’, in

Ginzburg, Myths, Emblems, Clues (London, 1990), 96-127

Ginzburg, C., The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth

Centuries (London, 1983)

Ginzburg, C., The Enigma of Piero: Piero della Francesca: The Baptism, The Arezzo Cycle, The

Flagellation ((London, 1985)

Ginzburg, C., Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (London, 1989)

Ginzburg, C., Myths, Emblems, Clues (London, 1990), 60-76

31

Ginzburg, C., ‘Checking the Evidence: the Judge and the Historian’, Critical Inquiry 18 (1991),

79-82

Ginzburg, C., The Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late Twentieth-Century

Miscarriage of Justice (London, 1999)

Ginzburg, C., Wooden Eyes: Nine Reflections on Distance (London, 2002)

Ginzburg, C., ‘Family Resemblances and Family Trees: Two Cognitive Metaphors’, Critical

Inquiry 30 (2004), 537-56

2. Discussions of Ginzburg’s Work:

Burke, P., ‘Talking Out the Cosmos [Review of Ginzburg, The Cheese & the Worms & of

Falassi, Folklore by the Fireside’, History Today 31 (1981), 54-55.

Burke, P. ‘Introduction: Carlo Ginzburg, Detective’, in Carlo Ginzburg, The Enigma of Piero:

Piero della Francesca: The Baptism, The Arezzo Cycle, The Flagellation (London, 1985), 1-5

Chiappelli, F, ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Renaissance Quarterly, 34

(1981), 397-400

Cohn, S., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Journal of Interdisciplinary

History, 12 (1982), 523-5

Del Col, A., ‘Introduction’, in A. Del Col (ed.), Domenico Scandella, Known as Mennochio: His

Trials Before the Inquisition (1583-1599), xi-cxii

Elliott, J. H., ‘Rats or Cheese? [Review of Cipolla, Faith, Reason & Plague & of Ginzburg, The

Cheese and the Worms]’, New York Review of Books 27:11 (26 June 1980).

Ginzburg, C., & Gundersen, T. R., ‘On the Dark Side of History’, Eurozine (11 July, 2003)

[http://www.eurozine.com/article/2003-07-11-ginzburg-en.html]

Hunter, M., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, History 66 (1981), 296

Kelly, W. W., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Journal of Peasant Studies 11

(1982), 119-21

LaCapra, D., ‘The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Twentieth-Century Historian’, in

LaCapra, History and Criticism (Ithaca, 1980), 45-70

Luria, K., ‘The Paradoxical Carlo Ginzburg’, Radical History Review 35 (1986), 80-87

Luria, K. & Gandolfo, R., ‘Carlo Ginzburg: An Interview’, Radical History Review, 35 (1986),

89-111.

Martin, J., ‘Journey to the World of the Dead: The Work of Carlo Ginzburg’, Journal of Social

History, 25 (1992), 613-26

Midelfort, H., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Catholic Historical Review 68

(1982), 513-4

Molho, T., ‘Carlo Ginzburg: Reflections on the Intellectual Cosmos of a 20 th Century

Historian’, History of European Ideas, 30 (2004), 121-148

Schutte, A. J., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Church History, 51 (1982), 218

Schutte, A. J., ‘Review Article: Carlo Ginzburg’, Journal of Modern History, 48 (1976), 296-315

Scribner, R. W., ‘Is a History of Popular Culture Possible?’, History of European Ideas, 10

(1989), 175-91

Scribner, R., ‘The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe’, in R. Po-Chia Hsia & R.

W. Scribner (eds), Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe (Wiesbaden,

1997), 11-34

Valeri, V., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Journal of Modern History, 54

(1982), 139-43

Zambelli, P., ‘From Menocchio to Piero della Francesca: The Work of Carlo Ginzburg’,

Historical Journal 28 (1985), 983-99

32

3. History and Anthropology:

Burke, P., History and Social Theory (Cambridge, 1992), esp. chs.1 & 4

Cohn, B. S., ‘History and Anthropology: The State of Play’, Comparative Studies in Society and

History, 22 (1980), 198-221

Geertz, C., ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture’ & ‘Deep Play:

Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’, in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays

(New York, 1973), 3-30, 412-53

Geertz, H., & Thomas, K. V. ‘An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, I & II’, Journal of

Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1975), 71-109

Sabean, D., Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany

(Cambridge, 1984)

Thompson, E. P., ‘Folklore, Anthropology and Social History’, Indian Historical Review, 3

(1977), 247-66 & reprinted as a Studies in Labour History Pamphlet (1979), copy available in library.

Walters, R. G., ‘Signs of the Times: Clifford Geertz and Historians’, Social Research, 47 (1980),

537-556

4. On Microhistory

Ginzburg, C., ‘Micro-history: Two or Three Things That I Know About It’, Critical Inquiry, 20

(1993), 10-35

Gray, M., ‘Micro-history as Universal History’, Central European History 34:3 (2001), 419-31

Gregory, B. S., ‘Is Small Beautiful? Micro-history and the History of Everyday Life’, History

and Theory, 38:1 (February 1999), 100-110


Postmodern Challenge (Middletown CT, 1997), ch.9

Kuehn, T., ‘Reading Micro-history: The Example of Giovanni and Lusanna’, Journal of

Modern History, 61:3 (1989), 512-34

Magnusson, S. G., ‘The Singularisation of History: Social History and Micro-history within the Postmodern State of Knowledge’, Journal of Social History, 36 (2003), 701-35.

Magnusson, S. G., ‘Social History as “Sites of Memory”? The Institutionalisation of History:

Micro-history and the Grand Narrative’, Journal of Social History 39:3 (2006), 891-913

Muir, E., & Ruggiero, G. (eds), History from Crime: Selections from Quaderni Storici (Baltimore,

1994)

Muir, E., & Ruggiero, G. (eds), Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe: Selections from

Quaderni Storici (Baltimore, 1991)

Muir, E., & Ruggiero, G. (eds), Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective: Selections from Quaderni

Storici (Baltimore, 1990)

Peltonen, M., ‘Clues, Margins and Monads: The Micro-Macro Link in Historical Research’,

History and Theory 40 (2001), 347-59

Ruggiero, G., Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance

(Oxford, 1993)

Szijarto, I., ‘Four Arguments for Micro-history’, Rethinking History 6:2 (2002), 209-15

5. On the ‘New Cultural History’ (again):

Aries, P., et al., A History of Private Life (5 vols., Cambridge MASS, 1987-94)

Burke, P. (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge, 1991)

Burke, P., Varieties of Cultural History (Cambridge, 1997)

Burke, P., What Is Cultural History (Cambridge, 2004)

Christie, N. J, ‘From Intellectual to Cultural History: The Comparative Catalyst’, Journal of

History and Politics, 6 (1988-89), 79-100

Gaskill, M., Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2000), 3-29

33

Hunt, L. (ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley, 1989), Intro.

Hunt, L., Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1984)

Hunt, L., The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1992)

Hutton, P. H., ‘The History of Mentalities: The New Map of Cultural History’, History &

Theory, 20 (1981), 237-259, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical

Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999), II, 381-403

Jones, C., ‘A Fine “Romance” with No Sisters?’, French Historical Studies, 19 (1995), 277-87

(also response by L. Hunt, ‘Reading the French Revolution: A Reply’, French Historical

Studies, 19 (1995), 289-98

LaCapra, D. & Kaplan, S. L. (eds), Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New

Perspectives (Ithaca, 1982)

LaCapra, D., ‘Is Everyone a Mentalité Case? Transference and the “Culture” Concept’,

History & Theory 23 (1984), 296-311, & reprinted in LaCapra, History and Criticism (Ithaca,

1980), 71-94

Licht, W., ‘Cultural History/Social History: A Review Essay’, Historical Methods 25 (1992),

37-41

Nussdorfer, L., ‘The New Cultural History’, History & Theory, 32 (1993), 74-83

Pittock, J. H., & Wear, A. (eds), Interpretation and Cultural History (Basingstoke, 1991)

Poster, M., Cultural History and Postmodernity: Disciplinary Readings and Challenges

(New York, 1997)

Stewart, P., ‘This Is Not a Book Review: On Historical Uses of Literature’, Journal of Modern

History, 66 (1994), 521-538 & reply by L. Hunt, ‘The Objects of History: A Reply to Philip

Stewart’, Journal of Modern History, 66 (1994), 539-546

34

Seminar 13: Postmodernism: A Serious Challenge to History?

Over a decade into the new century, it is sometimes difficult to see what fired the fierce arguments about postmodernism and history – or in Kenneth Winschuttle’s hyperbolic charge of 1996: The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social

Theorists are Murdering our Past (see below). To get a measure of the argument, read

Richard Evans and his critics (and supporters) on the Making History website. Then

(to go back to the beginning of the module) consider what the ‘History’ being challenged or defended actually is (or was). One thing we must all surely have learned by now, is that ‘History’ is not one, but many; and that Historiography is an account of those multiple ways of representing the past.


Evans, R. J., ‘In Defence of History: Reply to Critics (Version 4).’ IHR ONLINE: Making

History http://www.history.ac.uk/projects/discourse/moevans.html

Evans, R. J., et al ‘Continuous Discourse: History and its Post-Modern Critics.’ IHR

ONLINE: Making History http://www.history.ac.uk/projects/discourse/index.html


Green, A., & Troup, K. (eds), The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century

History and Theory (Manchester, 1999), 297-307 (‘The Challenge of Poststructuralism and

Postmodernism’)

Hughes-Warrington, M, Fifty Key Thinkers on History (Abingdon, 2008), Ch. on Hayden

White, 388-95

Iggers, G. G., A Global History of Modern Historiography (London, 2008), 301-306

Jenkins, K. (ed.), The Postmodern History Reader (London, 1997), ‘Introduction’, 1-30

Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge (Manchester 1984)

Southgate, B., History: What and Why? Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Perspectives (London,

1996), 108-122

Stunkel, K, Fifty Key Works of History and Historiography (Abingdon, 2011), Ch. 49 is an extract from Hayden White, Metahistory, 272-76.


1 Is it true that we can never grasp the material reality of the past, only read texts from the past that create their own reality-effect?

2 Does postmodernism, with its insistence that texts have no fixed meaning and its attack on the Western rationalist tradition, help such things as Holocaust denial, as

Richard Evans argues?

3 Jean-Francois Lyotard has defined postmodernism as the refusal to accept metanarratives on their own terms. All that we have are various stories that are told by people about themselves. Claims to universal truths are oppressive, totalising and must be resisted. What is a ‘metanarrative’? What does Lyotard’s argument imply for the discipline of history?

4 Is the humanist belief that people create their own history through their own willed action now unsustainable?

35

1. General

Cusset, F., French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life

of the United States (Minneapolis, 2008)

Domanska, E., ‘Historiographical Criticism: a Manifesto’, in Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan,

Alun Munslow (eds.), Manifestos for History (Abingdon, 2007), 197-204

Eley, G., & Nield, K., ‘Starting Over: The Present, The Post-Modern and the Pursuit of Social

History’, Social History 20 (1995), 355-64

Ermarth, E. Ethics and Method, History and Theory, Theme Issue 43 (December 2004), 61-83

Jenkins, K., On ‘What is History?’: From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (London, 1995)

Jenkins, K., Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity (London, 1999)

Joyce, P., & Kelly, K., ‘History and Postmodernism’, Past & Present 133 (1991), 204-13

Joyce, P., ‘The End of Social History?’, Social History, 20 (1995), 73-91

Joyce, P., ‘The Imaginary Discontents of Social History: A Note of Response to Mayfield and

Thorne and Lawrence and Taylor’, Social History, 18 (1993), 81-85

Joyce, P., ‘The End of Social History?: A Brief Reply to Eley and Nield’, Social History, 21

(1996), 96-98

Joyce, P., ‘The Return of History: Postmodernism and the Politics of Academic History in

Great Britain', Past & Present 158 (1998), 207-35

Lawrence, J., & Taylor, M., ‘The Poverty of Protest: Gareth Stedman Jones and the Politics of

Language’, Social History 18 (1993), 1-15

Munslow, A., Deconstructing History (London, 1997)

Rigby, A., ‘Being an Improper Historian’, in K. Jenkins, S. Morgan, A. Munslow (eds.),

Manifestos for History (Abingdon, 2007), 149-159

Scott, J., ‘How to Write History as Critique’, in K. Jenkins, S. Morgan, A. Munslow (eds.),

Manifestos for History (Abingdon, 2007), 19-38

White, H., Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore,

1973)

White, H., Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, 1978)

White, H., ‘The Public Relevance of Historical Studies: A Reply to Dirk Moses’, History and

Theory 44 (October 2005), 333-338

White, H., ‘Manifesto Time’, in K. Jenkins, S. Morgan, A. Munslow (eds.), Manifestos for

History (Abingdon, 2007), 220-234

Vernon, J., ‘Who’s Afraid of the “Linguistic Turn”? The Politics of Social History and its

Discontents’, Social History 19 (1994), 81-97

2. Historians and ‘the Postmodern Challenge’

Appleby, J., et al., Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective (New York, 1996)

Appleby, J., et al., Telling the Truth about History (New York, 1994), esp. chs. 5 & 6

Attridge, D., et al., Post-structuralism and the Question of History (Cambridge, 1987)

Boettcher, S. R., ‘The Linguistic Turn’, in G. Walker (ed.), Writing Early Modern History

(London, 2005), 71-94

Eley, G. & Neild, K., The Future of Class in History. What’s Left of the Social? (Ann Arbor MI,

2007), 57-80

Evans, R. J., In Defence of History (London, 1997)

Fukuyama, F., ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest, 16 (1989), 3-18

Fukuyama, F., ‘Reflections on the End of History, Five Years Later’, History and Theory, 34:2

(1995), 27-43


Postmodern Challenge (Middletown CT, 1997), ch. 10

Jenkins, K., Re-Thinking History (London, 1991)

Jordanova, L., History in Practice (London, 2000)

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Novick, P., That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity’ Question and the American Historical Profession

(Cambridge, 1988)

Passmore, K., ‘Poststructuralism and History’, in S. Berger, H. Feldner and K. Passmore

(eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (London, 2003), 118-40

Poster, M., Cultural History and Postmodernity: Disciplinary Readings and Challenges (New

York, 1997)

Searle, J. R., ‘The World Turned Upside Down [Review of Culler, On Deconstruction]’, New

York Review of Books 30:16 (27 Oct 1983).

Tosh, J., The Pursuit of History: Aims Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History

(London, 2002)

3. General on Postmodernism and Post-modernity:

Anderson, P., The Origins of Postmodernity (London, 1998)

Ankersmit, F. ‘Historiography And Postmodernism’, History & Theory, 28 (1989), 139-53

Appiganesi, R., & Garratt, C., Introducing Postmodernism (Cambridge,1995)

Bauman, Z., Intimations of Postmodernity (London, 1992)

Bunzl, M., Real History: Reflections on Historical Practice (London, 1997)

Fulbrook, M., Historical Theory (London, 2002)

Harvey, D., The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change

(Oxford, 1990)

Kumar, K., From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society: New Theories of the Contemporary World

(Oxford, 1995)

McCullagh, C. B., The Truth of History (London, 1998)

4. Historians engage in battle (Critiques of a ‘Postmodern History’):

Eagleton, T., Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford, 1983), chs.2-4

Elton, G.R., Return to Essentials: Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study

(Cambridge, 1991), esp. ch.2

Himmelfarb, G., ‘Some Reflections on the New History’, American Historical Review, 94

(1989), 661-70

Kirk, N., ‘History, Language, Ideas and Post-Modernism: A Materialist View’, Social History

19 (1994), 221-40

Mandler, P. ‘The Problem with Cultural History’, Cultural and Social History 1 (2004), 94-117

[& see the replies in Cultural and Social History 1 (2004) by C. Hesse, ‘The New Empiricism’,

201-07; C. Jones, ‘Peter Mandler’s “The Problem with Cultural History, or: Is Playtime

Over?”, 209-15; & C. Watts, ‘Thinking About the X Factor, or: What’s the Cultural History of

Cultural History?’, 217-24; and the rejoinder in P. Mandler ‘Problems in Cultural History: A

Reply’, Cultural and Social History (2004), 326-32

Marwick, A., ‘Two Approaches to Historical Study: The Metaphysical (Including

“Postmodernism”) and the Historical’, Journal of Contemporary History, 30 (1995), 5-35 (& cf.

H. White, ‘Response to Arthur Marwick in idem., 30 (1995), 233-46; & Symposium on the

Marwick-White debate in idem., 31 (1996), 191-28 (incl. C. Lloyd, ‘For Realism and Against the Inadequacies of Common Sense: A Response to Arthur Marwick’, 191-207; B. Southgate,

‘History and Metahistory: Marwick versus White’, 209-14; W. Kansteiner, ‘Searching for an

Audience: The Historical Profession in the Media Age: A Comment on Arthur Marwick and

Hayden White’, 215-219; G. Roberts, ‘Narrative History as a Way of Life’, 221-228

Mayfield, D., & Thorne, S., ‘Social History and its Discontents: Gareth Stedman Jones and the Politics of Language’, Social History 17 (1992), 165-82

Mayfield, D., & Thorne, S., ‘Reply to “The Poverty of Protest” and “The Imaginary

Discontents”’, Social History 18 (1993), 219-33

Stone, L., ‘History and Postmodernism’, Past & Present 131 (1991), 17-18

37

Stone, L., & Spiegel, G.,1 ‘History and Postmodernism’, Past & Present 135 (1992), 89-208

Windschuttle, K., The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering

our Past (New York, 1996)

5. Other (Older) Linguistic Turns

Clark, E. A., History, Theory, Text. Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Cambridge Mass., 2004)

Munslow, A., The Cambridge Companion to Historical Studies (London, 2000), 151-153

Putnam, H., History, Reason, and Theory (Cambridge, 1981)

Searle, J. R., Mind, Language and Society (London, 1999)

Williams, B., Truth and Truthfulness. An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton NJ, 2002)

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Seminar 14: Answering Part B exam questions

This seminar is designed to focus your attention on Part B questions of the examination paper. Some of the main categories of question that come up in one form or another are listed below. You should look also at past Historiography examination papers to get a feel for the way such questions are posed. You are advised to come to the seminar having thought about and prepared something to say about at least two of these questions. It is a good idea for the seminar tutor to allocate topics in the previous week, so that they can all be covered.

There is no reading-list as such for this seminar, though hints are given in some of the categories set out below. Many of these sorts of questions are discussed in passing in the general surveys listed at the start of the handbook.

Some broad areas:

(These are not definitive – for other possible themes see the list of Part B questions at the end of the handbook.)

 The building blocks of history. What constitutes historical ‘evidence’? Do you agree with Carr’s definition of a historical ‘fact’? (see What is History, Ch.1). How have other historians treated their evidence? (e.g. look at Ranajit Guha, ‘the Prose of

Counter-Insurgency’.)

 The place of history within the world of scholarly enquiry. Is History a ‘science’?

How does R.G. Collingwood understand this question in Ch.1 of The Idea of History and E.H. Carr in Ch. 3 of What is History? What connotations does ‘science’ have in

English? Does this differ from the German understanding, and is the difference important? (See discussion of Ranke’s use of the term here.) Is history – rather – an art, or a branch of literature?

 Historical time. How does our choice of periodization and focus on particular themes relate to notions of historical time?

 Relationship between history and society. How do we situate history as a discipline?

What is the social function of the historian? How should history be taught? Is a

‘historian’ necessarily a professional person? Or, can others be ‘historians’? Role of

TV history etc.? How have historians related to their society and times? Do we have any expectations of historians in this respect?

 Some major approaches and their impact. These include the Enlightenment,

Marxism, Gender Studies, Postcolonialism, and Postmodernism. How exactly has each of these impacted on the way we write history?

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Essay/written assignment titles:

(Seminar questions may also be adapted for short essays. The topics that are covered in term 1 only by Venice-stream students (medieval chroniclers, Machiavelli, Guicciardini,

Sarpo etc.) are not shown here – for these you should adapt seminar discussion titles in discussion with your tutor. You are expected to do at least one Part-B style question as a non-assessed essay during the course of the year.)

Part A-style questions

1.

What was the impact of the Enlightenment on History-writing in Europe?

2.

Would James Mill have written a better history of India if he had known Indian languages?

3.

Describe historical thinking in colonial era India.

4.

Assess the significance of style in Ranke’s historical writing.

5.

If Ranke ‘rejected Sir Walter Scott’, what was he rejecting?

6.

Was Leopold von Ranke a Romantic?

7.

Describe von Ranke’s ‘Ideal of Universal History’. Discuss its relationship to the local and the universal in the historical thinking of EITHER Karl Marx OR Max

Weber.

8.

Describe Iggers’ and Wang’s ‘history of Leopold von Ranke in the world’. Account for any deficiencies in their argument.

9.

What did Karl Marx mean when he asserted that ‘the social revolution of the nineteenth century can only create its poetry from the future, not from the past’?

(Eighteenth Brumaire, Section 1).

10.

How was The Eighteenth Brumaire revisited on its 150 th birthday?

11.

‘Where Hegel started with philosophy, Marx started with people’s experiences’.

Discuss.

12.

‘Simplicity supplies the key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies’

(Marx, Capital, Vol.1, xiv, s. 4). How typical was Marx’s historiography of India?

13.

Discuss the ‘Marxism’ of any twentieth-century historian or theorist of history [state the person clearly in the title].

14.

Why is Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’ still regarded as an important text?

15.

Can Walter Benjamin’s understanding of History be described as Marxist?

16.

What is a historical fact?

17.

What is class consciousness?

18.

Why are there so many literary texts in Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit

of Capitalism?

19.

Is history a social science?

20.

How did Weber approach the problem of causation in history?

21.

Do all historians proceed by constructing ideal-types?

22.

‘Only in the West does science exist at a stage of development which we today recognise as valid’ (Max Weber). Discuss.

23.

‘The science of men in time’ is how Marc Bloch described the practice of history.

What did he mean?

24.

‘With their examination of mentalité the Annalist historians furnished the historical profession with a new mode of reconstructing the past’. Discuss.

25.

‘It is undeniable that a science [like the historical science] will always seem to us somehow incomplete if it cannot, sooner or later, in one way or another, aid us to live better’. (Bloch, Historian’s Craft) Discuss Bloch’s view of the historical enterprise within society.

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26.

There are many English-language educational and media websites devoted to the work of Annales historians. Make a selection of them, and give an account of the ways in which a twentieth-century ‘historical school’ is presented to twenty-first century reading publics.

27.

The Making of the English Working Class ‘has come to be seen as the single most influential work of English history of the post-war period’ (John Rule, DNB entry for

E. P. Thompson). Why?

28.

Drawing on the resources of advanced options and special subjects, discuss whether or not there is still ‘a Thompsonian legacy’ in historical studies.

29.

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of micro-history.

30.

Discuss any historical case-study you have read. Is the case-study approach the same as the micro-historical approach?

31.

What was cultural about ‘the New Cultural History’?

32.

What was new and disturbing about the theory of Power outlined in Foucault’s

Discipline and Punish?

33.

Why did Foucault find such a warm reception among (some) feminist historians and social scientists?

34.

‘A challenge to the conventional Western interpretation of the non-Western world’.

Is this an adequate description of the impact of Said’s work on historical scholarship?

35.

Describe ‘the reception of Edward Said’ by historians and others.

36.

What – if anything – was original about Subaltern Studies?

37.

To what extent is it possible to hear the voice of the subaltern?

38.

What have been the defining characteristics to Chinese (or any other non-Western society’s) historical thinking?

39.

‘It is now men (and masculinity) that are truly hidden from history’. Discuss.

40.

Discuss the view that Judy Walkowitz’s City of Dreadful Delight is ‘about stories, not about history’.

Part B-style questions

(note: you should answer such questions comparatively, not focusing on just one historian or thinker.)

1.

Why study historiography?

2.

What is a ‘historian’?

3.

Is history a ‘science’?

4.

History is closer to literature than to science.

‟ Discuss.

5.

Is History primarily about the past or the present?

6.

What are the implications of E. H. Carr's claim that ‘only the future can provide the key to the interpretation of the past’?

7.

Is total or holistic history possible or desirable?

8.

Describe and discuss the historical enterprise of any one society, past or present, that you have studied during your degree course.

9.

What counts as a historical source?

10.

Is there any difference between a historical ‘fact’ and historical ‘evidence’?

11.

‘The idea of what is considered “valid historical evidence” has changed considerably over the past two centuries.’ Discuss.

12.

‘The science of men in time’ is how Marc Bloch characterised history. What did he mean? Introduce other historians’ conceptions of time in answering this question.

13.

‘The writing of history tells us more about the historian than about the past.’ Do you agree?

14.

‘ “Time” has no agreed meaning for historians.’ Discuss.

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15.

‘History from below invariably romanticises popular culture.’ Discuss.

16.

Is history, as it is written, inevitably relativistic?

17.

Is it true, as George Orwell claimed, that those with power in the present control the past?

18.

Has history ended, as Francis Fukuyma claimed?

19.

Can the writing of history be politically neutral?

20.

Does political history have a future?

21.

How and why has cultural history become so important?

22.

‘Modern history can only be conceived in relationship to the nation state’.’ Discuss.

23.

‘Since the early nineteenth century, historians have been engaged in a continuing debate with the heritage of the Enlightenment.’ Discuss.

24.

How should history be taught in schools?

25.

Why should governments fund historical research?

26.

What is the value of popular history? (You may answer this in terms of television history, film or drama.)

27.

Why has family history become so popular in modern Britain?

28.

Why was Marxist theory central to twentieth-century historical scholarship?

29.

Has the historical writing influenced by Marx been good history?

41.

To what extent has gender as a category of analysis changed the way historians conceptualise identity and experience?

42.

‘History as a discipline has been and is highly Eurocentric.’ Is this true?

30.

‘Postcolonialism forces us to re-evaluate the whole history of Britain in modern times.’ Discuss.

31.

How important has the history of the non-Western world been to the shaping of

Western historiography?

32.

How can global history meaningfully be studied?

33.

Are postmodernist views of history plausible?

34.

Was postmodernism a serious ‘challenge to history’ in the late twentieth century?

35.

Has the linguistic turn produced good history writing?

Seminar 1: What Is History?

Department of History

HISTORIOGRAPHY (HI323)

VENICE STREAM HANDBOOK

2012-13

Module Director: Professor David Hardiman

Lecture and Seminar Programme